Facebook posters push employees to switch to Android

One of Facebook's Android posters.

/ Josh Constine/TechCrunch

Borrowing a page from war posters of yesteryear, Facebook is using posters of its own to encourage employees to dump their iPhones for Android devices.

After it was reported in August that Facebook employees were being "nudged, cajoled, and even ordered to give up their iPhones for Android devices," the social networking giant appears to be stepping up its campaign. Posters encouraging employees to "switch today" have begun appearing on the walls at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to a TechCrunch report.

While Facebook used to give its employees primarily iPhones, the aim of the Android effort is apparently to improve functionality for the app, which has been criticized as slow, thin on useful features, and a drain on resources. The aim of this so-called dog-fooding, in which employees are encouraged to use their own products, would be to improve the Facebook experience on the smartphone platform with the largest marketshare; recent data shows Android controlling 68.1 percent of the smartphone market, while Apple's iOS nabbed only 16.9 percent.

One such poster gracing Facebook's walls included a large graph displaying IDC data that predicted Android would control about twice as much of the smartphone market as iPhone in 2016. Both posters encouraged employees to contact Facebook's help desk immediately to arrange to have their device switched to Android.

CNET has contacted Facebook for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

When asked about the posters by TechCrunch's Josh Constine, a Facebook spokesperson said: "We don't encourage one device over another. We let employees choose."

News of the posters emerged as Facebook released new versions of its app for iOS and Android. However, while Facebook trumpeted that the iOS app was "rebuilt from the ground up," the Android app update was relatively minor.

This article originally appeared on CNET.

[njdoor]

It's really not a poor comparison. They are purposefully comparing the OSes, not the devices. As the article says, the whole point is to get their employees to use the same system as most of their mobile customers are using, so that they will be using the same app... and hopefully see the issues for themselves.

[Scimajor]

The comparison made in the graph is a poor one. One graph shows the line for an operating system while the other shows the graph for one particular series of devices from one particular company.

Draw that same chart except this time compare the galaxy line of phones with the iPhone line of phones and the chart would look completely different.

As a user of both Android and IOS devices I can tell you that there are CLEAR advantages to both operating systems.

IOS devices have, in general, far superior apps available to it (This is mostly due to the fact that it is easier to develop for IOS. A long discussion which I won't go into.).

Android devices, however, have a wider variety of apps available to it. (Android, for example, does not suffer from the strangle hold that Apple forces on its developers.)